Moore's Law and capitalism

I've said for many years that there is only one thing that capitalism does better than anything else, and that is: make cheap gadgets.

I'm thinking about this as I'm sitting here, I'm legally considered homeless, but I have no less than 7 microprocessors in here! Most of which were cheap or free. I also have at least as many embedded microcontrollers too, and another half-dozen sitting in a drawer as chips ready to be placed into some project or another.

I'm part of a technologically-advanced underclass. I'm told that in China there are huge masses of deeply poor people running around with tons of microprocessor gadgets as well.

Moore's Law keeps marching on; computers keep getting more powerful and cheaper every year. As for other things like food, medical care, etc, even energy, not so much.

There are some interesting developments attempting to apply Moore's Law to problems like energy (i.e. solar energy, battery-driven cars), but they're haven't become quite the self-accelerating spiral that the semiconductor and consumer electronics industries are yet.